Relations To Other Language Families
Elamite is regarded by the vast majority of linguists as a language isolate and has no close relation to the neighbouring Semitic languages, Indo-European languages or to Sumerian (a fellow isolate), even though it adopted the Sumerian-Akkadian cuneiform script. A minority of linguists have attempted to link Elamite with other language groups; David McAlpin proposed an Elamo-Dravidian family with the Dravidian languages of India, Vaclav Blazek proposed a relation with Semitic languages of the Near East, and George Starostin published lexicostatistics finding Elamite to be approximately equidistant from Nostratic and Semitic but more distant from Sino-Caucasian.
Read more about this topic: Elamite Language
Famous quotes containing the words relations, language and/or families:
“As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind, that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling! And I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity ... of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.”
—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)
“the language obscene
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.”
—Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)
“The authoritarian child-rearing style so often found in working-class families stems in part from the fact that parents see around them so many young people whose lives are touched by the pain and delinquency that so often accompanies a life of poverty. Therefore, these parents live in fear for their children’s future—fear that they’ll lose control, that the children will wind up on the streets or, worse yet, in jail.”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)